Currently Quantum Computers Might Be Where Rockets Were At the Time of Goddard

schwit1 writes: If quantum computing is at the Goddard level that would be a good thing for quantum computing. This means that the major fundamental breakthrough that would put them over the top was in hand and merely a lot of investment, engineering and scaling was needed. The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets. Conventional flight could not achieve those goals because of the lack of atmosphere in space. Current computing seems like they are very limited in being able to tackle NP-hard and NP Complete problems. Although clever work in advanced mathematics and approximations can give answers that are close on a case by case basis.

Comments

Na, it's marketing hype.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give something a fancy name and by-God it has to be a world-changing technology, right? I just don't see it. The hardware is difficult to build / maintain, doesn't scale, and so far nobody is quite sure what to even do with it.

It's just a way to suck money out of venture capitalists and keep people busy in ivory towers. There's a reason that so many companies have the word 'quantum' in their name. It's all marketing hype.

Not to be taken seriously

[rjh]

Quantum computers cannot solve NP-Hard or NP-Complete problems -- at least, no faster than a classical computer. This is one of the most basic results in the field, and the author keeps on making hash of it. This article should not be taken seriously if it's rife with such basic errors.